We Are Organized Chaos

Augmented Reality Facebook Page’s Top 3 Links of the Week- 2/8/10

You can find all of this week’s Augmented Reality news on the Facebook page we manage (http://www.facebook.com/augmentedreality), but to follow are the three most popular stories of the week:

1. Concept Video for Future of Education…
2. The Future of Augmented Reality Gaming
3. The Future of User Interfaces

The Real Reason That iPad and iPhone Won’t Have Flash

I used to hate Macs.  A work experience with a G3, that seemed to crash every ten minutes, turned me off to anything Apple for years.  Everything changed, though, when I got my first Intel based Mac in late 2008.  The user interface was flawless, the UNIX shell made it a cinch to do back-end tasks, and I never had to worry about the issues that plagued that old G3.  I haven’t bought a PC since (at least not without immediately wiping the hard drive with Linux) and I’m known around work as a hardcore Apple fanboy, but that might be changing really soon.

The vast majority of applications I write are for Flash (written in Flex).  I love the ease of Flash development and rarely have any issues with programs I write for it.  That’s why I’m particularly troubled with, what seems to be, Steve Jobs’ fevered desire to destroy the platform.  If you don’t know what I’m referring to, Jobs reportedly told a group of Apple employees that Adobe, the developers of Flash, are “lazy” and that the platform is “buggy.”

I call shenanigans.

There’s a common myth about Flash circulated by developers not familiar with the platform (also known as “my platform is better than your platform” developers).  They say that Flash causes most browser crashes when, in fact, it’s not Flash itself causing most of those crashes, but bad Flash coding by inexperienced developers.  To put that into perspective, I’ll pose a rhetorical question.  When an iPhone developer makes an app that crashes constantly or leaks so much memory that you have to restart the device, does anyone say that Apple should dump Objective C and Cocoa?

Since making the move to Flex, a while back, I haven’t gotten word of a single one of my applications ever causing a browser to crash.  This is after extensive use of these applications, not only by the public, but also by a quality assurance department as well.  Flash is a very stable platform when used correctly.

The iPad and Flash

Adobe has had a fully working version of Flash ready for all major mobile devices for a little while now.  Other mobile operating systems, like Android and Windows Mobile, are going to use it, so why not iPhone or iPad?  Steve Jobs, among others, would have you believe that it’s because the platform isn’t good enough for their devices, but that’s just a cheap cover-up.  The real reason is that it would take a massive chunk out of App Store profits.

If you own an iPhone or iPod Touch then you know that the majority of apps for those devices are – and I don’t say this lightly – complete crap.  The App Store is overrun with weekend projects by novice developers and rip-off products by companies re-skinning the same worthless app to get more 99-cent sales, and Apple is making a killing off of the suckers that buy them.  Don’t believe me?  Look at these screen caps from the App Store for latest releases in the Entertainment and Lifestyle categories, taken while I was writing this.

If Flash were allowed on these devices, almost all of those developers would opt to release their apps as “iPhone ready Flash,” raking in all the revenue from dozens of ads for enlargement pills and naked video chat, which they would surely cover the page in.  If Apple allowed Flash on iPad and iPhone, App Store profits would drop by a double-digit percentage practically overnight.

Why HTML5 won’t be a Flash killer

Because of this, Apple is publicly throwing their hat in the ring for HTML5, all while completely ignoring some of the glaring problems that come with it.  Mind you, HTML5 is a good advancement for the web, but it’s anything but a Flash killer, and here’s why:

1.  Video codecs aren’t free.  The reason that Flash works with all sorts of video codecs is because Adobe paid for them.  When that responsibility is moved to the browser, problems ensue, because not every browser supports all those codecs.  Mozilla has chosen Ogg, Apple is with h.264, since that’s what iTunes runs off of, and while Google is also currently with h.264, word is that they might be about to opt for a codec they just gained ownership of.  This means that not all HTML5 video players will work in all HTML5 capable browsers.  This is a huge headache for developers, since cross-browser is the name of the internet game.

2.  HTML5 can’t make the level of games that Flash can, or at least not with anything near the same ease of development.  Casual Flash gaming is a huge moneymaker, and no one is ready to drop it anytime soon.  Just for fun, ask just about any Flash game developer what he would think about dumping ActionScript to write a game in JavaScript and enjoy watching his head explode.

3.  Whatever HTML5 will do, Flash can already do it and then some.  As time goes on, and more functionality becomes available with HTML5, Adobe will, through their normal development cycle, give Flash more and more features that HTML5 won’t be able to compete with.  Two years from now, it might be that video players and simple rich internet applications are best done in HTML5, but, in order to do the latest things available, you’ll still need Flash.

4.  Flash has a dedicated user base.  99% of computers in the modernized world have Flash installed.  Safari and Chrome, which make up about 14% of total browser penetration, are the only browsers capable of running YouTube’s HTML5 video player.  Things might change for HTML5 penetration, but not soon.

The future of my Apple fanboy status

I’m struggling to remain an Apple fanboy, with their ridiculous practices regarding Flash and closed development.  The truth is, while I’m not happy with the direction their mobile division is going, I love OSX to death.  I guess, as a developer, I still admire the hard working people at Apple who, behind the scenes, actually do all the heavy lifting that results in great products.

On the other hand, Steve Jobs is starting to look less like an innovator to me and more like the delusional cult leader that so many Windows fanboys characterize him as – blindly saying that technologies that don’t conform to his wishes are buggy and that their developers are lazy.  I can’t help but think, at least for a while, that I won’t be drinking his special brand of Kool-Aid.

Oh, and he also reportedly trashed Google because they’re making competitive products.  When the Google Tablet mockup shows multitasking and multi-touch, the Chrome OS has open development, and the device will almost assuredly run Flash, it feels to me like nothing more than sour grapes.

Follow me on Twitter, @blakecallens

Augmented Reality Facebook Page’s Top 4 Links of the Week – 1/29/10

You can find all of this week’s Augmented Reality news on the Facebook page we manage (http://www.facebook.com/augmentedreality). Normally we post the top three most popular stories of the week, but there is a tie, so this week, we are posting the top four:

1. Jiim Immersive Image-Based Modeling: Create 3D Models While Capturing Video
2. Spatial Computing Part II: Shopping
3. Augmented Reality Event Is Coming in June 2010!
4. Hungry Hungry Eat Head: Outdoor Billboard AR Experience

How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the iPad

As a self-described Steve Jobs hater, it’s going to sting a little to say this, but here goes:

Steve Jobs is right, and the haters are wrong. iPad is amazingly great and will be a tremendous hit. He is right to go with the iPhone OS and not OSX or some other multitasking capable OS. He is right to eliminate built-in expansion ports like SD, HDMI or USB. It doesn’t do Flash, which supports many of the Web’s most popular and heralded Rich Internet Applications – and that’s okay. It’s just a big iPod Touch. And that’s what it needs to be, for now.

Now let me try to explain how I came to this excruciating conclusion. First, I will start with a fictional story to put you in the right frame of mind. Imagine that after months of rumors and speculation, Apple came out and said, “Look, we have just developed the best video game of all time.” Enthusiasts drool and the Press pants with anticipation. Finally, MacWorld arrives and they dramatically unveil… Bejeweled. “But it doesn’t have 3D graphics OR multiplayer, this game sucks! It isn’t even as good as the original Wolfenstein. I’ve lost my faith in Steve Jobs,” the fan boys howl. “It isn’t really designed for an XBOX controller,” the pundits muse. And Steve Jobs smugly grins as over the coming years Bejeweled emerges as the standard bearer for the multibillion dollar casual gaming industry.

In order to appreciate why the iPad is going to be so successful, you’re going to have to relinquish your “Me First” attitude. Just because it doesn’t do what you want it to do, doesn’t make it a bad device. It just makes it inappropriate for you, personally. Most people don’t try to leverage the maximum power out of their laptops and netbooks – they use them as tools for accomplishing specific tasks. Under normal circumstances, there’s a correlation between general system power and complexity of usage. But more complexity doesn’t necessarily mean something is better; for most people, when complexity exceeds what is needed to perform the task at hand, it leads to an inferior user experience. Most people prefer managed experiences based on forcing functions to the open ended sandboxes that Tech Professionals like us demand. Instead of figuring out how a power-user would make best use of it, think of another type of user. Imagine a usage profile that focuses on personal email, Google, Wikipedia, Facebook, online shopping, listening to a little music and casual gaming. The iPad excels in this scenario. And this scenario, while not pertinent to the fan boys and pixel pushers, represents a much larger swath of the population. For them, support for “Push” notifications is all the multitasking they want or need. For them, external ports are rarely used, if ever – who wants little holes getting gummed up with grime and food? For them, not doing Flash is no big deal (especially with HTML5 around the corner, although they are unconcerned with such nuances). For them, it’s just a big iPod Touch. And that’s what it needs to be.

So to all the techno-geeks that feel let down, don’t. This device isn’t for you and it never was. Stop worrying about it and get on with your lives.

Why I Won’t Be Buying A First Gen iPad

I haven’t seen anything hyped this much only be such a disappointment on release since Crystal Pepsi. That’s what the iPad is, the Crystal Pepsi of computing (no John Scully jokes, I promise).
We were all hoping for something to lead us into the next generation of mobile computing, but what we got was a giant iPhone with a couple new features – the kind of features that should be in iPhone OS 4.0 anyway. Steve Jobs opened up the media event by saying, “…netbooks aren’t better at anything,” but I can’t help but be glad that I bought a netbook and put Ubuntu Linux on it last month instead of saving up for the iPad, and here’s why:

My netbook has a faster processor

Most netbooks run on a 1.6Ghz Intel Atom processor, while iPad runs an A4 1Ghz processor. To put that into perspective, the iPhone 3GS runs an 833Mhz processor, so this is not anywhere near a huge jump up in processing for a device four times the size of its predecessor. The A4 processor gives the iPad about 10 hours of battery life, which is impressive, but you’re not going to be able to do the level of processing available in most netbooks.

My netbook has a camera

This is a WTF non-feature for me. Apple had a chance to make the iPad the premier Augmented Reality device of 2010, but instead they’ve left every AR developer scratching their head. It’s not as if there isn’t enough room to put two cameras, one facing each way, in the device. How many more iPads would Apple sell if you could use Skype with it?

My netbook runs Flash

Apple’s continued cognitive dissonance when it comes to Flash on their mobile devices is getting rather annoying to me, and not just because I develop on the platform. Flash pretty much runs the interactive web nowadays, and it’s exclusion makes the iPad a “web-lite” device, unable to run Vimeo, Hulu, and any media embeds on social networking sites and blogs other than YouTube.
Apple has a good reason for not allowing Flash, which, believe it or not, is actually ready for the device – it will hurt AppStore profits significantly. Yet, when 90% of apps in the store are complete crap, who cares if their developers move to Flash. The real moneymaking apps will still be iPad and iPhone native.

My netbook runs a full OS

I have full install of Ubuntu 9.10 running on my Acer Aspire 1, giving my netbook the full functionality of a normal laptop. I can multitask on multiple, switchable workspaces, using fully functional applications, and I can engineer and compile new applications. I can browse through folders and files. I can do full network administration on a device that is taller than the iPad, but smaller in width and height.
I can do everything on my netbook that is capable with the iPad and then some, minus the slick user interface. To be fair, one of my favorite things about Apple products are the interfaces, but my MacBook and iMac back up the beautiful interface with tons of under the hood functionality. The iPad offers less than I can already do between my MacBook and iPhone.

My netbook cost half the price of the cheapest iPad

I bought my netbook at Fry’s Electronics for $250. It has a 160Gb hard drive, while the most expensive iPad model only has 64Gb for $829. The cheapest iPad only has 16Gb, or half of the storage of my iPhone 3GS, and costs $499. This is unacceptable for a ten inch device when you can get a 16Gb Micro SD card on Amazon for less than $50. Also, my netbook has two SD card slots on it, allowing me to expand it’s storage capabilities.

What Improvements would get me to buy the iPad

I have hope for future generations of the iPad if Apple integrates the following:

• Front and back facing cameras
• An OS that is less like the iPhone and more like OSX
• Allow Flash 10.1 on the device
• Make a slightly thicker version with a full hard drive and USB and SD ports
• Swap out the A4 processor with an Intel chip
• Stop hyping the current model like its something more than a big iPhone

I don’t expect these changes anytime soon, making this the biggest opportunity for Microsoft and Google to outdo Apple in years. A Windows, Android, or other Linux kernel iPad clone that has all the features serious computer people are looking for would deal a huge blow to the folks in Cupertino.

Augmented Reality Facebook Page’s Top 3 Links of the Week – 1/22/10

You can find all of this week’s Augmented Reality news on the Facebook page we manage (http://www.facebook.com/augmentedreality), but to follow are the three most popular stories of the week:

1. The Augmented Reality T-Shirt, presented by T-Post, a magazine you can wear
2. 7 Futuristic Movies That Got It RIGHT
3. The archive video for ARNY – Augmented Reality New York January 2010 Meetup

Google Goggles is the Real Deal

There’s been a lot of buzz the last few days about Google’s foray into Augmented Reality territory, but it’s the non-AR (technically) side of their new app, Google Goggles, that steals the show. I downloaded Goggles to the company Android phone today and gave it a test run. Actually, test run is an understatement – I ran around the office taking pictures of everything, amazed by the power of its photo recognition engine. One must assume that Goggles is, at least partly, the outcome of Google’s purchase of Neven Vision, an image recognition startup, back in 2006. It just might wind up being the company’s smartest aquisition, since it’s becoming safe to say that Google will own location AR once they get Goggles analyzing off a real time video feed.

While Goggles can recognize logos and graphics (it even recognized a painting in our office), upon use it’s obvious that it gets most of its power from text recognition – really good text recognition. The only thing it had trouble with were the words “BIG BOY” on my piggy bank, which it read as “BIG SOY” and then “BIO SOY,” both of which yielded interesting search results. As Google refines the engine to work faster and more reliably, though, it could wind up being the basis for true hyper-location AR.

Imagine this – a mobile app gets your relative position and direction from GPS and compass data (which Goggles already does), then behind the scenes, takes a snapshot from the camera. The image is analyzed by the recognition engine and matched with Google Street View images within your vicinity. Based on the scale and angle difference of the Street View image and the snapshot, the application is able to find nearly your exact location and place digital objects accordingly. No more will location AR be vague popups of information, but accurate modification of a real world view. To let up on processing and data transferring, the app could make this call every ten to twenty seconds and still produce results that would put every other location based AR company out of business.

I’m sure that someone at Google has already thought of something like this, so be ready for each successive update to Google Goggles bringing us one step closer to the ultimate vision of Augmented Reality.
For all you folks that don’t have an Android phone, here’s a video of me using Goggles around the office.

Follow me on Twitter, @blakecallens

What’s Gonna Happen To Print?

Let me preface this post by saying I take no pleasure in the demise of an industry. When businesses fold, people lose jobs and the results can be devastating to the individuals and families involved.

That said, the reality is, print is in big big trouble.  I wanted to draw your attention to a blog post that was written yesterday. It’s an interesting post, and while I agree with it’s content, that content in and of itself is not the interesting part. It’s the “what was written” coupled with the “who wrote it” that makes it fascinating to me. John A. Byrne, Founder of C-Change Media Inc is the blog post’s author. Now, maybe you haven’t heard of Mr. Byrne so let me give you a little bit of his resume. Until recently (and by “recently” I mean yesterday), he was the editor-in-chief of Business Week where he wrote 58 cover stories. He’s also held the position of editor-in-chief of Fast Company. In the print world, I would think that this guy has some “street cred”, and that he would be seen as a thought-leader.

So, why is this titan of print walking away from such a prestigious position to start his own company? You can read his whole post here, but bulleted out below are a few key quotes from Mr. Byrne:

• I passionately believe that the future of media is digital.
• Most of traditional media remains in a complete meltdown, dragged down by high costs, old ways of thinking, and legacy work processes.
• Print advertising will never come back.
• Users will not pay for content, unless they’re convinced it has immediate and tangible value. Very little journalism meets that standard today.

Obviously, that last bullet is one that Rupert Murdoch would disagree with (personally, I fall on Mr. Byrne’s side of the fence on this one), but what do you think? What’s going to happen to print? Will future generations see magazines the way I view the 8-track? Do you still spend on print and if so, why? Do you spend more on print than on interactive? I’d love to get your thoughts and insights below.

Why Flash is the Future of Augmented Reality (Including Mobile)

There’s been a lot of negative talk about Flash AR executions lately, and it’s deserved. Too many brands are using development houses that have no more understanding of the FLARToolkit than throwing a 3D model on a marker, let alone how to use it for successful product promotion. So, I completely understand why some of my peers, mainly those in the mobile AR realm, are rolling their eyes at the title of this post. Hopefully, I’ll make a good case for my claim, which is that Flash is the best breeding ground for new AR concepts that can then be brought to a wide array of other platforms.
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Mobile, Location based AR is the star of the moment. Many developers in the genre state that it’s what Augmented Reality is all about, but these GPS and compass based applications are only a small fraction of the types of engines being created and even already readily available. This has led to a rift in the AR developer community, causing the term, “True AR,” to be regularly used.

What is True AR? It’s the real time calculation of camera data being fed by the device to create an AR experience. Almost all web AR executions are True AR, although most of them right now are just True Gimmicky AR.

The limitations of GPS and compass units on mobile devices makes current mobile AR apps light on usability. The developer community has coined the melding of True AR with this genre to provide more accuracy, “Hyper-location AR.”

Unfortunately, there’s a problem with Hyper-location AR and any other True AR experience on mobile devices: processing constraints. It takes a whole lot of calculation to process camera data into a virtual construct, and while native applications on desktop computers are handling it well, mobile devices are still a little sketchy. This brings me to my first point:

Flash’s processing restrictions are a good thing for AR

Eye rolls again, I’m sure. Here’s the thing – if an algorithm runs well in Flash, you can be sure that it will run brilliantly on any mobile platform. Flash’s processing restrictions keep it running about the same, or just under, the iPhone, Android, and Symbian devices, when it comes to computation. An algorithm that allows me to track a hundred separate points in an image, per frame, might work out to 125 to 150 points on a mobile device (admittedly a guestimate). Meanwhile, an algorithm working in Java on Android might work a little slower in Objective C on the iPhone, or vice versa. When you start with Flash, you’re always moving up.

Flash is a very easy language to port

Yes, Flash is my favorite platform, so take this with a grain of salt. I didn’t get my start programming in ActionScript, though, and I’m well familiar with c++, Java, and Objective C, which run Symbian, Android, and the iPhone, respectively. Let me use c++ as an example, since it’s the primary language being used to create high-end AR engines.

If you take apart a large c++ library like bazAR, a feature recognition engine, it can be like reading Klingon. That’s because of how c++ variable naming has an effect on the processing of an application. In an engine like bazAR, that’s performing a huge amount of calculations, keeping your variable names as small as possible makes a huge difference in the final product. Problem is, it makes it a pain in the neck to figure out what’s going on when every step isn’t completely commented by the developer (99.9% of engineers barely comment at all).

If you’re a development house that’s created an AR engine in c++, but want it to work on a wide variety of devices, either you’re lucky enough that the creator is familiar with every single mobile platform, or you’re going to have to bring in an outside developer to port it. Having cryptic code, which is almost unavoidable in heavy c++ libraries, adds a good amount of man-hours to that work, which translates to more money spent than necessary.

Why more than necessary? Because Flash variable naming has no determination on processing. I could name a variable public var thisVariableIsReallyCoolAndIThinkYouWillAllLikeIt and it would take the same amount of processing as public var i. While a c++ engine would likely have a function with a dozen single letter variables, that require someone reviewing the code to decipher the calculations just to get a sense of what’s happening at all, a Flash one could have a descriptive name for each variable that makes the function easy to understand. Basically, Flash is the closest to pseudo-code a full-featured language gets. It can be the Rosetta Stone for your AR engines.

I know that some folks are thinking, “But you can just write a wrapper for c++,” but if you do that, you’re adding extra processing in an already processor intensive app. It only makes sense to port to the native language of the device.

Flash has an ease of development not offered by other languages

You might think I’m gushing on Flash again with this, but it’s the absolute truth. ActionScript takes the developer from idea to proof of concept faster than any other language. Many of the back end calculations that need multiple third party libraries for other platforms are built into Flash and are extremely simple to utilize. I’ve had an idea about a body recognition algorithm at 10am and had it running relatively smooth in Flash by noon, ready to show as a new proprietary library. Try that on a mobile platform.

Also, Flash has, arguably, the most vibrant developer community online. The barriers to entry are low – sometimes too low, as is demonstrated by gimmicky AR – but it’s simply the easiest language for a seasoned developer to learn. You can Google the answer to just about any specific Flash programming question imaginable.

Accessibility, Accessibility, Accessibility!

So you’ve created an experimental AR algorithm and you need people to test it for you, break it down, and help you squash any bugs or weaknesses. Let’s say you wrote it for Symbian. How many people in your office, let alone your QA department, have Symbian phones? Translation: potentially thousands of dollars of investment for something that’s experimental.

Now, say that you built it in Flash. Try to name someone at your office that doesn’t have a computer with Flash installed. Sure, you might have to pay for webcams, but they cost a whole lot less than smartphones. Plus it’s ridiculously easier to do a public beta test with Flash, where someone will just navigate to a site, rather than having to manage users downloading a regularly updated app to their phone. Once the kinks are worked out in a Flash build, port it to Symbian or any other device, where your test time and budget are a fraction of what they would have been if you went the other route. That and you have a working demo that doesn’t require a potential client to have a special device.

Full User Interaction

If using GPS and compass input is AR, and using camera data is True AR, then adding motion capture and body recognition to the mix is Really True AR. The algorithms that run body recognition in current AR will be the basis for the so called “Terminator Vision” that tech bloggers love to talk about lately. Nowhere is it easier to construct and test these algorithms for mobile use than in Flash.

Something as simple as drawing vector body outlines for results testing, or parsing bitmap data for motion recognition, could potentially take hours or days with any other platform, but is done in minutes in Flash. Why spend any more time than is necessary when experimenting with one of many hypotheses? I couldn’t tell you how many of my ideas went bust within an hour or two with ActionScript, when it would have taken me a whole day or more to reach the same conclusion in another language.

The most important thing is money

Less money spent, to be exact. Go the Flash route and you can have an AR algorithm ready to be ported to any platform without hassle, free of device specific features, guaranteed to run smoothly, at a fraction of the effort and cost of other methods.

Now, let the text based eye rolling begin in the comments section.

Follow me on Twitter @blakecallens

What’s New In Interactive Video – 11/17/09

• Cablevision Adds Search To TV Listings
• Tinychat Launches Live Video Streaming Portal To Take On Ustream And Stickam
• YouTube Debuts Holiday Solutions Channel (With Target)
• Networks & Their Fear & Loathing Of Hulu
• Brightcove 4 Adds Support For The iPhone, Facebook, Live Video, And More
• 5 Important Web Video Lessons for Small Business Owners
• NewTeeVee Live: Will Broadband TVs Connect With Consumers?
• NewTeeVee Live: How Obama, CNN and Facebook Brought Change to Social TV
• Where did she get that coat? Utvee turns tagging TV shows into revenue
• Could this finally be the season for Web TV?
• Three Things YouTube Has Learned From Pre-Roll Video Advertising
• Gannett Site For Moms Gets Viral Lift with Live-Streamed Birth
• How YouTube Thinks About Social
• Will Video Tweets Finally Put Our Webcams to Use?
• The Top 10 Most Watched Web Series, October 2009